Review.



65



REVIEW.



JUNGLE PEACE.*


“ Majestic woods of ever vigorous green,


Stage above stage high waving o’er the hills ;


Or to the far horizon wide diffused

A boundless, deep, immensity of shade.”


Honourably wounded in the cause of freedom, Captain Beebe

returned to Guiana to resume those studies of which he wrote so

delightfully in an earlier volume.! He now gives us a second book,

designed more for the general reader, equally interesting and equally

delightful. An amusing account of steamer-travel merges gradually

into vivid descriptions of gorgeous tropical islands, finally plunging

one into the heart of the great forest of British Guiana. Captain

Beebe excels in the gift of vivid description, combined with strict

scientific accuracy : for example, he says on p. 39 :


“ A long curved arm of richest green had been stretched care¬

lessly out into the sea, inclosing a bay, which, from our height, looked

like a small pool, but such a pool as would grace a Dunsany tale.

It was limpid, its surface like glass and of the most exquisite turquoise.

Its inner rim was of pure white sand, a winding line hounding

turquoise water and the rich, dark green of the sloping land in a

flattened figure three. I never knew before that turquoise had a

hundred tints and shades, hut here the film nearest the sand was

unbelievably pale and translucent, then a deeper sheen overlaid the

surface, while the centre of the pool was shaded with the indescri¬

bable pigment of sheer depth. In a great frame of shifting emerald

and cobalt set a shimmering blue wing of a morpho butterfly and you

can visualise this wonder scene.”


It has been well said that Sir Cornwallis Harris by his famous

books first unbarred the doors of the African menagerie; equally

true is it that Wallace and Waterton, Bates and Beebe have been

the Columbuses of the Neotropical world. In the pages now before



* ‘ Jungle Peace.’ By William Beebe. New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 293.

Illustrated. $1.75. net.


f Reviewed in the ‘ Avicultural Magazine,’ August, 1918.



